Business as usual, as usual.

With Trent Lott, John Boehner and Roy Blunt head up the GOP in Congress. The White House is trying to push through reactionary nominees like John Bolton and federal judges who couldn't pass muster even with a Republican majority. And on it goes. It looks like the best we can hope for during the next two years is inaction. Because it's still all about ideology:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women."

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.(. . .)

He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."

The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month's midterm elections. (. . .)

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman's Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

"Opposes contraception." Yes, it's back to the nineteenth century with BushCo.